Dear Mr President,
I write to you not as a political opponent, but as someone who stood alongside you during the struggle for our freedom and who respects the office you occupy.
There was a time when you, as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, and I, as General Secretary of COSATU, occupied two of the most significant leadership positions in South Africa’s mass democratic movement. We organised workers, communities and students knowing that detention, torture or assassination were real possibilities. The difference between life and death was often measured in days.
Together with millions of ordinary South Africans, we entered into a covenant with our people. It was never simply to win elections or occupy government. It was to build a country where every South African could live with dignity, justice and opportunity…